EMBURY COCKTAILS

Wednesday's Cocktail: Blanc Space

Spurred by Robert Simonson's succint piece on the quiet trend towards blanc vermouths, I've decided to finally bang out a little ranty something about a Dolin Blanc drink that I've been aiming to single-handedly launch into popular culture. So it's time to mint & brand a new drink craze for all the new fabulous girls, the seflie-loving ladies who pray to Taylor Swift, the once-gangly Wintourbot who has come to dominate so much of pop culture with her catchy, vengeful anthems and meticulously styled, wildly unobtainable Instagram existence.

As The Cosmo was to the Sex & the City  gangs, candy colored high octane fuel for their endless debriefings on the men in their lives as well as their endless pursuit of more men, so this drink shall be to this generation of ladies with an attitude, and appetites. It's the refreshing, easy and chic Dolin Blanc on the rocks with an orange twist, which I've dubbed "Blanc Space" after Swift's hard-to-escape "Blank Space".  The light-ish drink is simplicity itself to construct--ice in a glass, rocks glass or otherwise, generous pour of Dolin Blanc atop, orange twist for citrus oils and a lively bit of zing. It's meant to be sipped (sometimes sipped rapidly) while getting dressed  to go out, on the nightly mission to flirt with boys, less perhaps for the simple pleasure of it but rather so that they may have gossip fodder to share via social media, while writhing in endless paroxysms of narcissistic glee, certain that they are blameless, pure and perfectly glamorous, fueled by endless re-affirmation in the form of likes on their various feeds. Generation Swift: The end of everything! But I shall give these vampiric social media succubi their New Cosmo to fuel themselves with.  And it's a good one, sustainable, sophisticated and enlivening. If "Cougar Juice" is a light white wine--almost always pinot grigio--that might like some ice or even some soda water thrown into a wine glass with it, the Blanc Space is for these young, voracious cougars-in-training. I just hope they're having actual fun in their hunt for Instagrammable moments, and Instagrammable boys.

There's a missing "orange garnish" in this version that was just published in the NY Observer.

Tyler Stevens of Teardrop Lounge (for another week, at least, before taking over the bar at soon-to-open Tusk) came up with the slight variation for the "Squad Punch" version--adding some orange twists to the Blanc and letting sit for a bit before serving up from a pitcher.

Now, I should confess that I conceived of this marvelously clever and punny drink during some late night freestyle drinking with some middle-to-late middle-aged gay buddies, and we very likely looked and sounded not unlike the very TS fangirls we were ranting about at the time. And, in the end, the drink is perfect for that getting-ready-to-go-out-and-get-some moment, whether that "some" is selfies or actual human flesh, or just some free form fun.

Wednesday's Cocktail: Sbagliato with Martini Gran Lusso

On day four (or was it five?) of Portland Cocktail Week I was invited by Bacardi's Jacob Briars to sit in on a pretty heavy duty master class on vermouth at  The Meadow, your one-stop shopping spot for all your salt, chocolate, bitters and vermouth needs--a recent addition to their offerings. Giuseppe Gallo, Global Martini Ambassador, led the rapt students down the rabbit hole of the aromotized fortified wine's history and the many branches of this Italian family tree. All a bit heady for me on day four (or was it five?) of the marathon educational and recreational drinks blitzkreig that descends on Portland each October. A miraculous reviving force appeared in the midst of the lesson, however, in the form of a round of Sbagliatos, the refreshing accidental cousin to the Negroni that was born when a barman grabbed a bottle of bubbles instead of gin and this lower-proof, effervescent junior version was born. The use of the new Gran Lusso Martini brought its robust--even lusty--herbal complexity and pronounced honey sweetness to the new classic. The Sbagliato is quite perfect for serving at a large gathering: I think this one will be on offer in the toolshed at my family's house for Thanksgiving this year.

SBAGLIATO

1 oz Martini Gran Lusso

1 oz Campari

1 oz Prosecco

 

Stir, strain into a coupe, generous orange zest garnish.

 

Giuseppe illustrating the broad range of hues in Italian vermouths.

Students nosing.

During a blind tasting Giusseppe asked students to locate each vermouth on the flavor matrix on a dry erase board.

Said results were then recorded with several smartphones to be reviewed later, an amusing melding of new and new-ish technology.

The mystery vermouths backstage.

An assortment of botanicals used in vermouths were on hand to sample

The Meadow's impressive vermouth offerings.

Holiday-Cocktail-In-Progress

Worked this one up over the weekend at a friend's home upsate. Juniper plants ring the house, and I cut  a couple sprigs and stuck them in a bottle of Beefeater 24 and let it sit overnight (about 9 hours).

While brazenly retrofitting the meticulously crafted riff on the classic Beefeater recipe I felt a pang of anxiety; mucking about with master distiller Desmond Payne's elegant gin is a bit like playing God. But the result was good good I got over it-- the juniper actually melded in to the grapefruit and tea-inflected profile, adding a crisp, mineral complexity to the subtle gin. I chilled a coupe, then gave it a rinse with Dolin dry vermouth, shaking well. Stirred the B24Juniper about 30 times then strained into the glass, garnishing with a fresh sprig of juniper and some small red berries called crab apples that came from the field in front of the house. The finished martini was zingy and ennervating, with a more crisp menthol note from the leaves of the juniper than you get from the oily, denser berries that are distilled in the gin already. Cranberries, huckleberries or even a red grape could work as a subsititure for the crab apples for the choice visual flourish. No name yet-open to suggestions. J.R.

Juniper on the lower right, Autumnal beauty straight ahead.

Wednesday's Cocktail: The Martinez

Sometimes a drink just starts popping up in conversation all over the place, so much so that is seems to be a little micro trend. Embury's Wine and Food editor (yes, in that order) Stuart Krimko was in Chicago recently and stopped into Violet Hour, where he was turned onto The Martinez. His rave review was just the first of many unsolicited mentions of the classic drink over the next couple of weeks. Violet Hour uses Old Tom gin, but we found a great alternative with the readily available Plymouth gin at Louis 649, a serious cocktail bar without the serious attitude, in the most Easternly edge of the East Village.

THE MARTINEZ

2 oz. Plymouth Gin
1 oz. Carpano Antica Formula Sweet Vermouth
.25 oz Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
2 dashes Angosturra Bitters

Stirred and strained into a coupe glass. Garnished with a lemon twist. 

Friday Night Cocktail: The Perfect Louis

Mark Buettler from Dressler again, this time with a brilliant cocktail that he created. A riff on the Perfect Manhattan, this one using bourbon (hence the Louis-ville), organic honey syrup and the elusive celery bitters. Quite possibly the best new cocktail I've tasted in the past year. Mark makes his own celery bitters from scratch, but Bitter Truth does them, which makes preparation considerably simpler-although it does help if you read German for ordering them online. The fellas at Brooklyn Barmen have 'em, and no German required.

PERFECT LOUIS (By Mark Buettler)

1 oz Bourbon (Mark prefers Old Forresters)
1 oz Dry Vermouth
1 oz Sweet Vermouth
1/2 oz White Honey syrup (equal parts white honey and hot water)
2 dashes Angustora bitters
2 dashes Celery bitters
Stir 30-35 times, Strain up, No garnish

Dressler

Brooklyn Barmen

Wednesday's Cocktail: The Ascot

I just came across this photograph of an Ascot taken in the fall of 2007, right after my first spirits press junket (Beefeater, see pen) and I was awash in the punchy afterglow of the discovery that drinking could be not merely euphoric and occasionally destructive but also aesthetically invigorating and, in the right hands, actually transcendent. The alchemy that a really good cocktail creates was new to me, and when I first started writing about spirits I found myself sitting at various bars around the world doing what can reasonably be called research. These experiences of watching and listening to skilled bartenders as they made and explained drinks changed me, and I daresay the seed for Embury was planted in that halcyon fall, when St. Germain was miraculous and new (see notes in photo) and I first grasped what kind of instant transformations a gifted bartender (or an excellent recipe, followed closely in one's home) could effect. It was a revelation that seemed worth sharing during that November cocktail hour when I took this photo. It still does.

J.R.

THE ASCOT

2. oz Beefeater gin.
3/4 oz Punt e Mes vermouth
1.5 oz Aperol Aperitivo

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon peel.

The Manhattan Project

   

   Josh Condon

    I came to the Manhattan cocktail earlier than most. Which is not to say I was sipping from a perfectly chilled cocktail glass during high school parties or expounding on boutique vermouth varietals after my college rugby matches. Rather, my parents had a tradition, borne of having four children, which dictated they banish their progeny for an hour after my dad returned from work each night to spend an hour alone together over drinks. At some point (around the time I was eleven or so), my father got wise to the fact that having kids means a man doesn’t have to mix his own drinks. I was quickly drafted into first chilling the glasses, then fishing out the cherries and olives (my mom was – and is – a martini drinker), and, finally, mixing the drink in a 3-1 ratio of whiskey to vermouth, adding a two dashes of bitters, and shaking the whole thing until ice-cold.
    I wonder what it says about me that I count this as one of my most defining childhood memories?

Missed Flighty

 When I was working on my Asian Influenced Cocktails story for the February OUT, I asked my friend Alberta Straub , a.k.a. Miss Flighty (above, and below, at Bourbon Fest), to contribute some original recipes. Alberta's a madcap scientist behind the bar, wildly inventive and unbound by anything as drab as conventional wisdom, and  she has a level of erudition that her zany manner might not indicate to some. Take, for instance, a recent e-mail from her in response to an invitation to a Verdita party (I've written about that magical tequila drink here):

Cool party !!! I just did some fun tequila like enhancements...sorta that might be good for your shots..I made a coriander salt..I re constituted the salt by making a super saturated mix and letting it recrytalize..it had chilis in it..to I also did these sugars for tequila...where I took fresh herbs in a mortar and pestal and pouned them add suger till it absorbed the flavors then dried it in the over and sifted..oooo!

That's how she rolls. She'd contributed a couple ideas for the article, good ones, but our choice, The Woo Hoo, got cut when OUT's editor had a Manzana at Dressler that John Byrd created and it had to go with the story. Here are Alberta's recipes that didn't make the magazine, which I'm delighted to feature on Embury.

THE WOO HOO (after the 5, 6, 7, 8's song from Kill Bill)

In a mixing glass add:

1.5 Kissou Rice Vodka
3/4 oz Plum Wine
1/4 peeled Asian Pear
Muddle vigorously, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
Add a splash of lemon bitters and a twist of lemon

Another idea she threw my way:

The Bijou is classic but I make a variant.
 

THE CUCKOO BIJOU

1 1/2 part Plymouth gin

1/2 Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth

1/2 part Green Chartreuse

Handful of Thai Basil

Add ingredients to a mixing tin, muddle gently, add ice and stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass garnish with a basil sprig.

Alberta's breezy, smart how-to clips on the On Networks are here. Her four-part guide to making  Bloody Marys is quite inspiring, as you can see from her segment of infusing your own vodka below.

Welcome The Manchester

On a recent trip to Manchester, England to do a piece for Genre's Travel Issue I met up with Matt Fairhurst, Head Barman at the Harvey Nichols Manchester . Largely self-taught rather than a product of the U.K. mixology mill that can be a bit Draconian and arch, he delighted in making  riffs on classics and in inventing purely original creations. An incredible boon to his creative impulses was the proximity of the Harvey Nicks' spirits section, which lay about twenty feet past the entrance to the restaurant. Matt has access to an impressive selection of specialty spirits and other ingredients there, and when he's working on marvelous new inventions all he has to do is pop round the other side of the place to grab, say, cherry bitters or Marsaca, the  Croation cherry liquer. As with so many autodidacts I've met in the bar world, Matt's unfettered enthusiasm yields wondrous results-he hasn't been told what he can't do, and so believes he can do anything, concoction- wise--and thus he can. Here are his notes on this drink on the left--his variation on a Manhattan, dubbed The Manchester:

 

"With respect to the Manhattan I made you guys, it was in between sweet and perfect.  Usually bartenders will make a Manhattan - sweet, dry or perfect (as I'm sure you are aware). I've been playing around a lot using different types and quantities of both bourbon/rye and vermouth. This means you can be so specific and creates a larger scale when making or ordering a Manhattan, which I think customers a quickly catching on to.  In addition to the vermouth I like to add 5 ml of glace cherry syrup this adds; texture, flavour and gives the drink a real shine, I think the first sip is with the eye.  The recipe was;

 

3 drops Angostura Bitters (quite good with aperol bitters as well)

15 ml Antica Formula sweet vermouth

10 ml Noilly Prat dry

50 ml Old Rip Van Winkle 10yr old

5 ml Glace cherry syrup

Garnish with a lemon twist- when making the twist if you use a potato peeler rather than a knife, you just get the zest and none of the white pith which will add a bitter flavour to the drink, twist the lemon rind over the surface of the drink and rim the glass before dropping it in."

Let me assure you, it is sublime.  I'll have more of Matt's recipes here in the near future as he's contributed some of his inventions to my piece on Asian-influenced cocktails for the January issue of OUT. Below are some Harvey Nicks signature drinks, as well as another Fairhust orginal, The Gentleman Zombie.

Decadent Opulence

40ml Baileys

15 ml Cream

15 ml Blackberry puree

10ml Cacao

10ml Caramel

Titan Cosmo


35ml Orange vodka
40ml Strawberry puree
5ml Gomme
10ml Lemon juice
10ml Frais de bois

Blackberry Cascade

12.5 ml Chambord

12. 5ml Vanilla

3 Blackberries

Champagne float

GENTLEMAN ZOMBIE

 
Matt's version of a zombie--lethal!!!!!!
 
20ml Havana Club
20ml Doorly's
20ml Appleton XN
15ml Gooslings
10ml Wray And Nephew Overproof 63% abv rum
35ml Lime juice
20ml Taylor's velvet falernum
Dash French absinthe
5ml Maraschino
10ml Apricot brandy
5ml Gomme
30ml Orange juice
50ml Pineapple juice
squeeze of fresh pink grapefruit
 
Do not drink more than two!